Tag: Proselytism

After 20 months in bureaucratic limbo, Canadian-American Christian David Byle was arrested on 13 October and detained overnight by security police in Ankara, the Turkish capital. His detention took place the morning after US pastor Andrew Brunson was ordered released by an Izmir court and allowed to return to the . . . Read More

Four Algerian Christians accused of proselytism will appear in court on 6 November, in Bouira, in the north-eastern region of Kabylie. They had been due to appear yesterday (9 October), but the hearing was postponed. The four, including three members of the same family, are all from the town of . . . Read More

The man spearheading the campaign for “justice” for the victims of the worst case of anti-Christian violence in India’s history has denounced the failure of the Odisha state government to follow up on a Supreme Court order to investigate why there have been so few criminal convictions despite nearly 6,500 . . . Read More

Kazakhstan tries to make the “exercising of human rights conditional on state permission”, says the Oslo-based news service Forum 18. “[Kazakhstan] systematically violates intertwined fundamental rights – such as the freedoms of religion or belief, of expression and of assembly” when it has international obligations to respect and defend these, . . . Read More

Ten years after the worst case of anti-Christian violence in India’s history, the local community continues to struggle, with reparations from the government slow in coming and seven reportedly innocent Christians still in prison. Nearly 100 Christians were killed, 300 churches and 6,000 Christian homes were damaged, and 55,000 people . . . Read More

A law criminalising religious conversions and the hurting of religious feelings comes into force in Nepal today, a year after the bill was passed. As World Watch Monitor reported last year, Nepal’s Christian minority fears the new law will be abused by those seeking to settle scores – as has . . . Read More

Christian villagers in a rural district of India’s Maharashtra state have been told that one church will be closed down every week because they have been “destroying” local tradition and culture by “luring” others to convert to Christianity. Since June, over a dozen houses belonging to Christians have been attacked . . . Read More

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has called for the “immediate and unconditional” release of an Iranian pastor and three of his church members, after they were taken to prison last week to serve ten-year sentences for “acting against national security” by “promoting Zionist Christianity” and running “house . . . Read More

A Christian couple have been deported from Nepal after they were accused of proselytism, a criminal offence in the country, reports national newspaper The Himalayan Times. De Vera Richard, from the Philippines, and his Indonesian wife Rita Gonga had been staying in Nepal on business visas and were running a . . . Read More

A group of 16 Indian tribal Christians who visited another tribal family in the eastern state of Jharkhand to talk to them about Christianity are in police custody after the local village head accused them of “conversion by inducement”. Last year, Jharkhand became the seventh Indian state to introduce a . . . Read More